Come join me in the country as I navigate life as a working mom with an array of critters, kids and husband in tow! You'll find a little of everything - food and parties, kids and craft projects, gardening and outdoor fun, a top-to-bottom house renovation, family and traditions, community and women's issues. Grab your boots and let's get to it!

More Country How-To's

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Curious George Reading Month Party

While the official Reading Month is coming to an end, reading is something that can (and should) be celebrated at any time of the year. Our daycare plans several events each year for the daycare families to provide a chance to interact, build excitement and continue to build pride in our daycare. The events have become something all the families look forward too.

Taking inspiration from a favorite character or book series is an easy way to find a theme for one of these parties. It also provides a lot of inspiration for games and interactive activities (like decorating these little Curious George bags).

Because the local Great Start program is also housed in the building, they have co-hosted several of these events and brought with them this time, the opportunity to access an excellent Curious George costume for an hour.

Great Start also provided a free book for each child to take home and several pages with activities and fun snacks for parents and kids to do at home around the "monkey" theme to encourage reading.

We provided a reading corner with a nice rug and lots of different types of books for the children to sit and read. We also provided two different types of aluminum foil, parchment paper, newspaper, and waxed paper for the children (and parents!) to experiment with boat building.

Once their boat was complete, they could test it out in the water-filled sensory table. We also borrowed some boats from the daycare stash for the kids to play with.

The sensory table is always a popular activity with kids of all ages and most of the adults find it hard to resist as well.

Our daycare was once an elementary school and when it was vacated many stage props from old plays were left behind. My daughter remembered this old red bus and suggested we use it as a photo prop and activity. It wound up being another very popular spot for the kids to play.

One of the moms found some great monkey-themed cups and napkins and used the colors off those to coordinate the rest of the party supplies.

We set two of the long lunch tables with all the supplies for decorating the banana pudding (check out the recipe - not your usual banana pudding!) so families could sit to decorate and eat their treat.

We used the little kitchen area with the serving counter to serve milk and dish out the banana pudding.

We also had a "banana tree" where the kids could decorate a paper banana with their name however they wanted and place it on the tree.

This was a neat decoration and easy way to see how many kids turned out.

And last but not least, we have always put down a big area of paper (from the rolls) and used it as a coloring area. This time, we decided to change it up a bit by putting down black paper and providing sidewalk chalk for the kids to "graffiti". You can see this was a busy spot!

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Just My Country Me

Food, kids, family, animals, hockey, snowmobiling, tradition, crafts, parties, gardening, re-purposing, and the great outdoors - need I say more?! Never a dull moment, I work full-time and then come home to a mini zoo (if you think I'm joking stick around a bit). My husband is my high-school sweetheart and we have two brilliant, adorable kids (of course, we are biased). We love this great state of Michigan and all it offers, we both come from big families, and on top of that we just bought the foreclosed house next door and renovated top-to-bottom in a few months time! I grew up around farms and rural life (I even went to a one-room schoolhouse) and its important to me to teach my children those traditions. We're not afraid to get dirty out here in the country so make sure you wear your boots and get ready for an adventure!